If your skin is of a particular hue, namely that of the majority in the country where you live, the likelihood is that no-one has ever questioned where you belong.
It’s quite a privileged position to be in, whether you choose to believe that or not. Those who have the hue of the minority, like myself, have a very different reality.
For us questions about where we belong, and where we have the “right” to call home, swirl around us like a quiet soundtrack constantly humming in the background.
But it’s a soundtrack which at particular points in history shifts from being low elevator music to a roaring crescendo. It’s a reminder that to some, we do not have the right to call the UK our home. The last crescendo came earlier this month when far-right riots broke out across England.
Of course, categorising people as being unworthy of being able to call Britain home is not a new idea. It’s one which was central to the British Empire, and taking the people and riches of other nations became critical to Britain’s growing power. While wrong, a sense that Britain was a uniquely evolved nation which brought civilisation to its colonies helped accelerate the Empire’s rise, and despite its now diminishing power, it’s a concept which stands firm in some quarters.
But where an individual calls home is, quite frankly, no-one else’s business. And how on earth we’re still tying ourselves in knots both politically and emotionally to dictate to others where home sits in an individual’s heart, will never make sense. No one has the right to do that. The rioters who invaded the streets of my home, Britain, just a few weeks ago definitely didn’t have the right to dictate to me where I should call home.
It’s this theme that triggered the idea for my debut book No Place Like Home almost three years ago, but it had roots deeper in my past. Britain is ever-evolving, ever-growing, and yet some things stubbornly stay the same.
After a childhood spent with kids telling me to go back to where I came from, and certain sections of the media and the political sphere backing up that sentiment, I’m well used to that feeling of not wholly belonging in the place I call home despite my love for it. But in my heart, “home” is not just the place I grew up. It’s also the place of my parents’ birth, Jamaica.
I was raised in a Jamaican household full of its vibrancy, food, culture, discipline and immigrant struggles, and it means that my heart is built on the foundations of two places. I am as much at home in one as I am in the other; both make my heart whole. I refuse to allow anyone the right to tell me that makes me less British.
But the conversation about where home is in your heart isn’t just one for Britain’s immigrant community. Where we call home, and the homes we grew up in directly impacts the adults we all become: who we are, the jobs we do, how we raise our kids, the friends we choose.
Not having that sense of home, whether that’s a country, a culture or simply a place which feels safe to grow up in, can cause deep repercussions in someone’s life. My mum was a social worker who worked to better the lives of children whose home lives were consumed with darkness, destruction, and very little light.
She understood more than anyone the importance of a safe and secure home for children, and the impact which not having that can have on them and on society at large. In No Place Like Home I tell the stories of the thousands of “forgotten” children in care, who were failed by a system designed to give them a second chance.
Perhaps the privilege of growing up in a society which is, for the most part, safe and secure blinds some to the realities of those who haven’t had that. It almost closes their hearts to the destruction and death experienced by others.
Those on the streets during the riots have never faced bombs, destruction and death, and yet feel qualified to tell those who have where they can call home. That is crazy.
The heart of who we are lies in the place we call home, both as individuals and as a society. Both sets of my grandparents answered the distress call from Britain after the Second World War, when it badly needed people from around the Commonwealth to emigrate here to help fill gaps in the labour market. They moved their families to Britain to give their children a life which was better than what had come before, and to help rebuild the “Motherland”.
They helped to save this country and built a home in the face of overt and dangerous racism, from which future generations could benefit.
My family and thousands of others helped the country to rebuild its home as it recovered from some of its darkest times, having been shattered through war. We are a greater and stronger society because of that.
Home is the thread that ties us together as individuals, but also ties us together as a society. It’s a beautiful thing. But only if we stop dictating to each other where that home should be.
No Place Like Home is out on 5 September (Renegade Books, £22)